What can happen is if you queue in a single ship, and one of the factories starts working on it, then a bit later you queue in a second ship and a second factory starts to work on it. They won't finish at the same time because they didn't start at the same time, but they'll finish pretty close together. Depending on how you queue your construction, it can give the appearance of producing ships at a faster rate when, in fact, it's working on many ships at the standard rate with the ships getting completed not simulatenously, but in a staggered fashion.

Also, the build panel that will show a yellow progress bar indicating how close to completion a ship is shows the progress of the ship closest to completion. If a ship is built and the next closest ship to completion in the system (not in a particular frigate factory) is at 80%, the yellow bar will drop back to 80% to show progress on that particular frigate.

So, it's a bug? Do you know if they plan on changing/fixing it?

Ok, I just fired up a quick game as Advent, built another factory, queued two ships, and watched. It SHOWS the ships being built at EACH factory, but when completed, they both get launched from the SAME factory.

But the build time behaves as if I do indeed have two independent factories, since when I click twice fast to build two, they both get completed at the same time.

-HM

Its worth pointing out that there is only one queue per system. When you click on the factory, you access the planets queue, not the factory's.

Yes, correct, it's one queue. The game automagically recognizes that you have two (or more factories), and figures out the time to completion accordingly. It just dispenses them all at the same location. So you may have a factory on the other side of the planet, and it may show a ship being built there, but a ship may never get dispensed from there. My guess is that the first factory built is the one that is designated as the dispenser.

I'd say that some people may expect that ships dispense from one location, say slightly closer to the front lines, but in actuality they'll dispense from across the planet.

-HM

It is true that if you individually queue up several frigates, that when completed, they'll pop up out of a single factory, that being, the factory you have selected. However, if you do a Shift+Click, and queue up 5 ships at once (whether or not you've got 5 factories), all those ships will be completed at the same time, and exit different factories. The reason is this: even if you click quickly, individual ships are being built at different times, across however many seconds you queued those ships. So, when the first ship is completed, it leaves the building slip, opening up the space, and the next ship follows it out. It's a bug, but a sensible one, considering the mind of a computer.

Now, I haven't gone out of my way to test this, so I can't recall if the simultaneous exit works only by a fast queue (the Shift+Click method), or if it also (or only) works by selecting all of your system factories (Alt+Clicking on a factory) then setting your queue. All I know, for sure, is you can have ships coming out of multiple factories, or just one factory, depending on how you have the ships queued.

As for usefulness, so long as this bug remains, you can manually place factories at the Phase Lane exit points, then individually queue up ships from one factory when you've got an enemy fleet incoming, that way, you'll have a flood of ships from one factory near or in range of the incoming fleet, making reinforcing defending fleets easy. Just remember the 45 degree cone in which the phase jumping fleet can enter your system, place factories accordingly, and pump them out as fast as you can click from the approprate factory.

So, as an example, you have a planet with 3 phase lanes. You build at least 6 factories, 2 at each lane, spread out to cover either side of the cone (and that's 45 degree's from your planet, with the center of the 45 degree cone lined up with the phase lane). Then, a fleet moves in, and you see that it is moving along the left side (from your planet's perspective) of a lane, so you select that factory and queue up with clicks only (no shift+click), and after the build time is up (and there is no noticable change in build time. I haven't used a timer, but it doesn't feel like a quicker build, so I can't be certain), you can have at least 6 frigates pouring out within a couple seconds, depending on your clicking speed. Viola, quick defense, where you need it.

Hrm, just tried what Solaron suggested, and he's right. Shift-clicking will spit the ships out of multiple factories. And he's also right that if I click on a specific factory, then single-click build multiple times, the ships will come out of that particular factory (thus negating my hypothesis that they will come out of the first factory built at the planet).

-HM

I can't say I know what the intended behavior is, but it is neat that we spent so much time figuring this out. Now we can treat the factories as if they had multiple build queues, even though management-wise the user only has to deal with one. Single-click to dispense from one factory, shift-click to dispense from multiple. I guess if you single-click fast, we can rationalize the behavior by saying the workers at all the factories have moved themselves to work at the same one.

The one thing I haven't tried yet, but I assume will work. If I click on one factory, and build a ship there, then a click on a different factory, and build a ship there, will the ships dispense from the separate factories?

I also don't know if you click on the planet, and use its menu to get to the build ship screens, how it decides which factory is the one that it will dispense from.

Man, we all have to get together and work on the Wiki. There's so much information that would be useful to have all in one place (stuff that I'd like to be in the manual, but what can you do).

-HM

Thanks for confirming, HM. Now that it is confirmed, you now have a pretty nice planet defense strategy. Back that up with Hangar Defense, either spread out, or centrally placed in close orbit by the planet, and you'll have a planet that will require a heavy fleet with cap ships to break. And it needs to be quick, otherwise, all those ships will slow down the attacking fleet, perhaps long enough for major reinforcements to arrive.

Of course, it's important to note that you need to turn off the Vasari Phase defense on the factories, otherwise, ships won't come out of the factories you need to produce from, and you'll lose your flood capacity. Better to have them keep producing, rather then shut them down, lose the tactical edge, and only have them 33% longer. Better to use the time left to pump out ships while the factory lasts.

And Kruelgor, it still is a bug, since it isn't a logical or realistic process (can't have multiple ships streaming out of a single ship factory, unless they've got Vasari Phase Jump Portals, which is nuts in a grav well). But if they're willing to leave it in, this is one bug I'd be happy to exploit.

Hey, don't feel so bad, Necronic. Strategies always take making before they can be used, and not everyone thinks up strategies to make and use. Even that strategy I wrote out here, I was only using it for a little while, and it took a while to fully make it. Sure, I'm new to the game, but I've burned a lot of hours making and testing out a few strategies, and even this one with the factories, I didn't fully implement it (like I didn't spread out my factories precisely, as I suggest in this strategy, cause I didn't really think about it before today). Now that I've written it out and fleshed it out, I'll be using the whole strategy.

Really, the only thing I was thinking about before was the whole Factory flood, when I found out about how they get built simultaneously. Before, I was wasting time selecting each factory seperately, thinking that each factory had a seperate queue. Now, after some observations, I don't waste my time that way, and will now use that knowledge to strategically position my factories.

I'm pretty sure this feature was in the 'original' RTS game Dune. I can't think of a single RTS game that doesn't have this behavior. However, I agree that it is informative to those who have never really spent time in the RTS genre.

There is no quicker overall build time, however. Each ship is built at the same rate as if you had only one frigate factory. However, the TEC military labs decrease the build time, and there are several techs that decrease build time.

This can be TRIVIALLY demonstrated by just going into an instant-win game, building one frigate factory and ship, then building two frigate factories and two ships. You can even watch it as a replay and get the exact time if you don't feel like using a stopwatch. I have done this before just for the hell of it. So I think I'm in the clear when I say this.

Thanks, Mettra. I thought that was the case, concerning build time. Like you, I didn't bother with a stopwatch, although I also didn't want to waste the time with a replay timer (lazy ). Still, it seemed like the rate of building didn't accelerate because of multiple factories, other then the fact that you've got several ships getting built simultaneously. Individual contruction speed didn't improve. So thanks for confirming that. I can rest easy now, lol

As for Dune II, you could build several Vehicle factories, but you'd have to select each one to build your Trikes, Tanks, Launchers, etc. The Westwood Command and Conquer used faster build times by having more of the necessary buildings, and you could set the primary structure, although with enough buildings, the units could be coming out so fast that exiting units need to leave from an alternate site, but you couldn't build multiple units. You'd have to wait for the queue which had a delay, even with the sped up build time.

Here, in SoaSE, it uses the multiple factories for improved efficiency, in a similary fasion to Dune II, but here, you could simultaneously pump out units by selecting one factory, instead of jumping around to several factories.

So, while various RTS games implements a system of improved efficency by mass building structures, SoaSE does it in a way that differs from most of them, combining elements to make for an efficient system. Combine that with the Empire Tree, and you can be fleet building at one planet while half a galaxy away, and I can't think of any RTS that uses both of those elements, particularly the Empire Tree.